Riptide (11 page)

Maggie smiled. “Why are you such a jerk?”

“Because it gets you all twitterpated, and I think you’re just precious when you’re twitterpated.”

“Seriously. What did you guys talk about?”

Wyatt took another sip of his beer, and watched as a shrimp boat headed their way from the docks up river. “The Bucs, bless their little hearts. Shrimp. Boxers versus briefs. There was a little bit about you in there, too.”

“Wyatt.”

“You’re a good woman. We agreed on that. I’m a good guy. We agreed on that, too. If I hurt you, he’ll climb up my legs and beat my ass. There was some disagreement, there, but nothing we can’t work through.”

Maggie felt a warmth creep into her chest. David, her lifetime protector, even now, even with Wyatt.
 

The first time she’d really noticed him, when they were ten years old, he was pulling Regina Sparks off of Maggie’s back, as she spit sand out of her mouth and struggled for air. As Maggie recalled, Regina had felt that Maggie had busted her in the nose with the tetherball on purpose.
 

Maybe she had; she couldn’t remember. But, Regina had been yanked off of her and a hand had been held out, and Maggie had been helped to her feet by a boy with hair like black diamonds and a skateboard under his arm.
 

“Well, make no mistake,” said Maggie with a smile. “He’ll do it. So mind your P’s and Q’s.”

“You have nothing to fear from any part of my alphabet.”

Wyatt winked at her, and she turned around to look at the river. David’s pretty old blue Jefferson was just passing by. Mike, a tall black man in his forties, was at the helm. A much smaller, much thinner black man was leaning against the port side, drinking what would probably be the first of many cups of coffee. David was on the starboard side, facing the park, one hand hanging onto one of the ropes that held his nets.

Maggie smiled as he passed, feeling self-conscious about the fact that Wyatt was standing next to her, but David smiled back. She waved at him, and he held up a hand in response, as a muffled
boom
sounded.
 

Maggie wondered why the fireworks were starting already, then there was another
thump
, and David was gone, swallowed by an enormous ball of fire.

F
or two eternal seconds, Maggie’s brain stopped processing information from her ears and eyes, stopped sending commands to her body. Then everything came back at once. Chaos erupted around her, and she kicked off her deck shoes and took one running step toward the seawall before a large hand grabbed the leather belt threaded through her shorts.

“No, dammit!” Wyatt yelled. She spun around. “The river’s on fire, Maggie! Come on.”
 

He grabbed her hand, and she ran after him, shoeless but not noticing, as he pushed and yelled his way through the people that were flocking to the seawall, and the people who were running away from it.
 

In the corner of her eye, Maggie saw Deputy Dwight Shultz, in uniform, running toward them.

“Sheriff!” he yelled.

Wyatt didn’t slow down. “You call Fire?” he yelled back.

“Yes sir—” he started, but they had already run out of hearing range over the pandemonium in the park.

Maggie sort of noticed that there were men running in front of and behind them, all of them oystermen or shrimpers, all of them heading for the docks, but the fact registered only in the vaguest terms.
 

She also vaguely understood that she was barefoot, and that rocks, bits of oyster shell and other objects were cutting her feet as she ran. But, her only real, solid thought was that she shouldn’t be running
away
from David.

They reached the dock at Scipio where they tied up the powerboat used by the Sheriff’s office, the one Maggie had docked just the other day, when the worst thing happening was a severed leg in a net.
 

Maggie heard feet pounding behind and around her, as men ran for other boats and other docks. She and Wyatt reached the 90s-era Wellcraft that belonged to the SO courtesy of a coke bust, and Maggie bent down to hurriedly untie the stern line. She heard running footsteps stop behind her.

“Are you crazy?” Boudreaux asked, raising his voice. She stood and spun around. “You can’t take that outboard out there.”

Maggie thought, oddly, how surprised she was to see Boudreaux. He usually didn’t attend July 3
^rd
.

He looked up at Wyatt. “Come on,” he said, as he spun around.

They ran after him, toward a couple of shrimp boats on the next dock. He leased the boats out to some of the locals, then bought the shrimp they brought in on them.

A big, bearded man whose name Maggie couldn’t remember was already firing up the engine, and two other guys were getting the stern and bow lines. There were men in the boat across the dock, doing the same. Boudreaux jumped nimbly onto the starboard side, jumped down onto the deck, and turned to grab Maggie’s hand. She took it and jumped down to the deck, then Wyatt followed.

“You have the fire department on the way?” Boudreaux asked.

“Yes,” Wyatt said.

“Maggie! I’m coming, too!”

Maggie turned toward the dock and saw her father standing there, his chest heaving. Georgia was a few steps behind him, her face streaked with tears.
 

“No, Daddy!” Maggie yelled, feeling panic threaten to assert itself in her stomach. “You can’t get near that smoke!”

Gray had been diagnosed with Stage 1 lung cancer a little over a year earlier, although he’d never smoked. He’d been fortunate, but he’d lost part of his left lung.

“Mom, keep him away from the smoke,” Maggie yelled, and then they were underway.
 

“Todd, turn that spotlight on,” Boudreaux called to the bearded man, and the man reached over and turned on the spotlight on the front of the small, aft cabin. “Sheriff, there’s another one on the bow.”

Wyatt grabbed Maggie’s shoulder and looked at her face. “You okay?”

Maggie nodded, and he ran toward the bow as they motored toward the flames. Maggie ran to the starboard rail. Docked boats were still blocking a good view of David’s boat, but the sky was lighter, tinged with orange and blue and white, just above the old Jefferson. The boat itself was engulfed, from the aft cabin to the stern.

How many minutes ago had David hugged her goodbye? Three? Five? Ten? Maggie got a sensory memory of warm cotton, Jovan musk, and Suave shampoo, and something large and hard and threatening almost closed her throat.

Once the shrimp boat cleared the marina and came into the river in front of the park, the smell of diesel and smoke were overwhelming. The other shrimp boat belonging to Boudreaux was ahead of them, and started to angle toward the park side of the wreckage, while their boat headed around the other way.
 

It was full-on dark now, and the fire, spotlights, and dozens of flashlights from the seawall reflected on the black water. Here and there, burning pieces of debris floated on the surface. The portside outrigger had collapsed against the side, and its net spread out on the water like a broken wing.

Maggie leaned over the starboard rail as they got closer, and the bearded man cut back the engine just a bit. “David!” she called.

The center and stern deck were almost completely gone, and Maggie knew that David was in the water. She strained to make sense of the various dark shapes that littered the surface, but tore her eyes from the water when she saw that they were going past the Jefferson.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at Boudreaux, who was at the starboard rail as well, further aft.

“Maggie, they’re gonna get carried that way,” he yelled back, bending and straightening his arm to indicate the mouth of the bay. “We’re gonna circle back.”

Maggie turned back to the water and leaned further over the rail, as though this would help her see better. Suddenly, she heard a commotion of voices from the seawall at the park, and she saw John Solomon, recognizable by the white apron, as he stepped off the seawall into the river, a life preserver from who knew where in one hand, a rope in the other. Another man stood at the seawall holding the other end of the rope. Maggie stopped breathing, as she watched John grab something that was lodged against one of the old dock pilings. As he threw it onto his shoulder, Maggie saw that it was a very large, very black arm.
 

The other shrimp boat angled over toward John at a crawl, as he pulled Mike’s arm through the life preserver, then brought it down over his head.
 

Maggie turned her attention back to the water’s surface. She could hear the firetrucks approaching from downtown, and she knew the Coast Guard and the fire boats would be there any minute to subdue the fire, but David wasn’t on his brand-new old boat that he’d saved for, and Maggie didn’t care about the fire. David was in the water.

About forty yards past the Jefferson, she felt the trawler slow and begin to turn to starboard and go back up river. Boudreaux and the other man ran to the port side to examine the surface, while Maggie stayed starboard.

A few moments later, she saw it. An arm, a mostly white one, lying on a piece of the hull. She traced it, saw the back of David’s green plaid flannel shirt. “There’s David,” she yelled, and had climbed up and dived off the rail before Boudreaux and the other man had turned around.

“Todd!” Boudreaux yelled, and when the bearded man turned around, Boudreaux pointed over in the direction in which Maggie was furiously swimming. Todd nodded and turned to starboard.

Wyatt came flying back from the bow. “Dammit, dammit,
dammit
!” he yelled as he ran.
 

He met Boudreaux and the other man as they arrived at the starboard rail. Boudreaux opened one of the built-in boxes and pulled out a bright red rescue tube like lifeguards carried, a rope already tied at one end. He deftly tied the other end to the rail, never taking his eyes off the water.

Wyatt pulled a large, industrial flashlight out of the box and turned it on, pointed it at Maggie’s head as she approached the hunk of shattered wood.

Maggie took a deep breath and powered through the last few yards, struggling to swim across and up the current. She finally reached David, and grabbed onto the hull with her right hand. The back of David’s shirt was almost burned away, and the back of his head was bleeding and burned and missing some hair.
 

She grabbed the back of his collar with her left hand, and pulled him backward onto her chest. He started to slide downward, and she got her left arm underneath his, wrapped it around his chest, and cried out as she dragged him back up her body. Then she leaned backwards in the water, as far as she could without letting go of the piece of hull.

“I’ve got you, baby,” she gasped. “I’ve got you.”

David’s head lolled on her left shoulder, his face buried in her neck. She pressed her face against his as she struggled to keep her arm under his, and her grip on the jagged edge of the hull.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

The trawler lumbered alongside a moment later, its small wake pushing Maggie and David up against the hull, even as it pushed the hull further away. She loosened her grip on the broken wood long enough to get a better purchase on it.

The light from Wyatt’s flashlight blinded her suddenly as it shone in her face, and then the rescue tube slapped down in the water beside her. She let go of the hull, and she and David both went underwater a second, until she reached across their bodies and grabbed hold of the tube. She felt a sharp tug, and they were dragged toward the trawler.
 

As she came out of the focus of the flashlight, she saw the silhouette of Boudreaux as he pulled her in. Then she saw Wyatt pass the flashlight to Boudreaux’s man and then lean over the rail.

Maggie let go of the rope just long enough to grab it closer to the rescue tube itself, then wrap her arm around it a few loops to give her some buoyancy. Wyatt was leaning as far as possible over the rail, but even with his height, his hand was still too far away to grab hold of David anywhere.

Maggie let go of David’s chest just long enough to grab his left bicep instead and lift his arm.

“I got him,” Wyatt barked, as he grabbed David’s hand. He pulled David off of her, and pulled him out of the water up to his waist. Boudreaux leaned over the rail and grabbed David’s other arm. His crewman had a hand looped into the back of Boudreaux’s belt to steady him.

“Be careful of his back,” Maggie yelled, as they got David to the rail, then Boudreaux let go of his arm and grabbed his feet.

They carefully lifted David over the rail and laid him down, then Wyatt leaned over and stuck out his hand. Maggie reached up and grabbed it, and he hauled her over. She fell down to her knees next to David. Given the state of his back, his face looked surprisingly normal, but for the watery blood that dribbled from his nose and right ear.
 

As the engine revved and the boat sped up, Maggie put a hand on David’s chest. He wasn’t breathing. She pinched his nose shut, took a breath, and clamped her mouth down onto his. She felt his chest rise just slightly as she pushed the air into him. She did it again, only vaguely hearing Wyatt speaking. She took her mouth away one more time, started to take a breath.